Children’s Moral Judgments are Related to Group Identity and Advantage in a Competitive Peer Context

• In Event: 3-171 - Group Identity, Group Norms and Children’s Moral Judgments in Diverse Competitive Intergroup Contexts

Integrative Statement

Children’s moral judgments about fairness in relation to variables such as intentional attributions and group identity have been the topic of several recent investigations. In one study, children’s understanding of others’ beliefs (theory of mind) prevented them from placing blame on individuals’ who commit “accidental” transgressions. In other research, children’s status within a social context (advantaged or disadvantaged) has been shown to relate to their display of theory of mind competence. Further, children are more likely to reach positive conclusions when evaluating ambiguous situations in which the potential rule violator is an in-group member rather than an out-group member.

The role of group identity and advantaged status in a competitive context with ambiguous intentions has not been previously examined, and this study seeks to fill this gap. An ethnically diverse group of children from the USA (N = 121), evenly divided by gender, ranging from 4 to 10-years-old were told vignettes about two teams competing in pumpkin growing contests. In each story, one character gives their team an advantage over the other. The manner of the advantage changed, however (fair advantage gained through hard work, unfair advantage gained through an intentional rule violation, and an unfair advantage gained through an unintentional rule violation). Critically, prior to hearing these stories, children were assigned to membership on one of the two teams. We predicted that children who were members of the advantaged team would evaluate the actions of the advantage-creator more positively than those on the disadvantaged team. We also predicted that children on the advantaged team would be more forgiving of the unintentional rule violation than the intentional rule violation, but that children on the disadvantaged team would not make this distinction.

Main effects of team membership were found for children’s decisions regarding punishment, rewards, and expulsion from the team for all stories (all ps < .025) with children on the advantaged team judging the behavior more favorably than those on the disadvantaged team. Children’s evaluations and attributions of intentions (AoI) were more positive when evaluating an in-group member for the unintentional violation and fair advantage stories (all ps < .035), but not for the intentional violation story (evaluation p = .205, AoI p = .437). We also found that children on the disadvantaged team did not differ in their judgment of the unintentional and the intentional violation across any of the measures (all ps > .177) while children on the advantaged team gave more favorable responses toward the unintentional advantage-creator for four of the five measures (all ps < .005) (the exception was no difference for the reward assessment, p = .096).

Together, this study provides novel evidence that allegiance to a group and advantaged status are related to how children make moral judgments and evaluate behavior relevant to those groups. Further analyses for age-related changes will be reported for the conference presentation. The findings will be discussed with reference to group identity and advantaged status on moral judgments in childhood.

Authors

• Alexander D'Esterre, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Bonnie Woodward, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author

• Melanie Killen, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author